


Feeling Real

by spotty_lion



Series: Final Fantasy Shenanigans [25]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Fluff, Hrothgar Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), M/M, Marriage Proposal, Patch 5.3: Reflections in Crystal, Patch 5.3: Reflections in Crystal Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:27:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26324131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spotty_lion/pseuds/spotty_lion
Summary: They had been waiting for this.
Relationships: Urianger Augurelt/Warrior of Light
Series: Final Fantasy Shenanigans [25]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1135331
Kudos: 7





	Feeling Real

They had been waiting for this.

Everything they had been doing had been leading up to this.

All of the fighting. All of the magic rotting through bone. All of the blades clashing against flesh. All of the bloodshed. All of the death.

Bleeding the Light from a sky that had been tainted by it for too long. Spilling a pot of ink back to the stale clouds. Taking the Light in his soul, until he was so full of it that he almost broke at the seams. Destroying a city that was nothing but a memory. Ending the Ascian threat after so many years of crossing blades with it.

It had all led them here. To the Scions being able to go back to the Source, to go back home. And Jack had been waiting so patiently for it.

Memories of the months without Urianger haunted him. Months when a shadowed melancholy had followed him, when clawed fingers had gripped his shoulders and refused to let go. It had bled from his mouth, an ashen taste on his tongue, sticking to his teeth. It had clogged up his throat, restricting his breathing, making him choke on his own sadness. 

The ghost of those months made him shudder to remember them. He had been so low. He knew the touch of depression better than most. He was no stranger to dark days. But the way he had felt then was more than that. _Those_ feelings frightened him to look back upon them. 

He had known true loss then.

And it had been ugly.

He knew that he was lucky for that loss to have righted itself, for Urianger to step back into his life, leaving a flurry of precious pixie petals in his wake. He knew that. He made sure not to take it for granted. Because while he may have had his love returned to him, others had not.

He had seen the loved ones of others disappear and never return. He had seen the scars that had been left behind by the gash of another’s death. He had seen the blood and the tears that had mixed into one. He had seen the anguish in another’s eyes. He knew what loss looked like.

Sometimes, he had been the cause of it.

It was something that he felt the guilt of almost every day.

His sins were plentiful and poisonous.

Elidibus has been right. He was death. And he always would be.

‘Jack?’

A smile graced the corners of his lips as he heard the familiar sound of Urianger’s voice. A voice that had soothed him on many a long and painful night. A voice that had been the background noise to his daily life for what seemed like such a long time. A voice that he loved with all of his heart.

‘Yeah?’ he asked, turning his head to face his boyfriend.

‘Art thou well? Thou seemst to be away with the Fae,’ the elezen said, his head tilting.

Jack’s lips lifted to show his teeth, teeth that were a little bit stained with ashen melancholy. ‘Not when you’re always occupying them, they’d have no time for me,’ he said.

Urianger chuckled, the fondness that coloured it making the hrothgar’s heart squeeze. ‘Aye, their attention doth seemeth solely devoted to causing mischief to me and mine work. Several of them tried to hide away mine tomes in a valiant attempt to prolong the time until my departure,’ he said, amusement shimmering in his tone. And then his arms crossed in that way of his, when a scolding word was about to cross his tongue. ‘But thou knowest full well that mine question hath not been answered, and thou also knowest that I can always tell when thou art attempting to change the subject.’

A sigh crossed furred lips. ‘You do,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t anything important… just… thinking about everything that happened to get us to this point.’

‘And I gather it was not the most pleasant of journeys to think back upon?’

‘You were with me,’ Jack said, ‘so it was okay.’

Cherry blossom leaves fell from the branches of Jack’s words and landed on Urianger’s cheeks, dusting them with a fine blush. ‘Full glad am I that mine presence has such an effect on thee, my beloved.’

‘Of course it does, you know that,’ Jack said, taking a step towards his boyfriend and winding an arm around his waist, pulling him into an embrace that the elezen folded into with a practiced ease.

‘Aye, thou hast made sure of it, ‘tis one of the many things I love about thee,’ Urianger said, his hand on Jack’s chest. ‘But come, we should make ready for the journey back to the Source.’

Jack nodded and they both turned to the rest of the Scions.

‘Are you two _quite_ finished?’ Alisaie said, her arms crossed.

‘Aye, my lady,’ Urianger said with a smile, stepping out of Jack’s embrace.

The hrothgar couldn’t help but notice how cold he felt without the elezen there.

He stood to the side, a hand on Ryne’s shoulder, as the Scions - those the both of them had come to think of as family - crumbled into crystals. He gave the young girl at his side a last smile, one that she returned brightly, though he could see the flicker in her light, knew that her heart was breaking. 

‘You’ll be okay,’ he said. ‘I promise. You’ve grown so much since I first met you, you’ll be just fine.’

‘Thank you, Jack,’ she said. There was a tremor in her voice, hidden to most ears, unless they were truly listening. ‘I’m expecting you to come back and visit, though.’

‘Of course, my dear,’ Jack said, a fond smile lifting his lips.

Now he stepped forward, joining his friends who had been with him along the journey throughout the years. They each held one of the crystals, leaving Urianger’s for Jack’s embrace.

Curling his fingers gently around the crystal, his breath shook.

A thousand memories lay in his hands, many that he held his image, he knew. He was responsible, once again, for keeping someone alive, for bringing them home. All those memories that lay in Urianger’s head, his very soul itself, and they were all in one crystal that looked so very small in Jack’s large hands.

Small.

Vulnerable. 

Fragile. 

His duty was to protect.

Like it always had been.

Though he may have rejected the teachings of his clan back in Bozja, shaking his head when asked to devote himself to their queen, the need to protect was written into his very self. It was woven through his veins, stitched into his fur. It came as naturally to him as breathing did, hidden in his lungs.

A smile came to his face as he realised that he had finally found something worth protecting.

And he cradled that to his chest, shielding it from the groping fingers that lay between worlds, that yearned to take from him.

He brought it back to the Source, his hands trembling as he carried it back to the Rising Stones.

And now they, he and his friends, were waiting for it to work.

They seemed to do so much waiting.

Waiting to understand.

Waiting for cures and remedies.

Waiting for results.

Waiting for the next horrific foe to creep around the corner.

Waiting for the pain that they knew they could not run from.

There the Scions lay, the beds side by side, as if they were looking at a church and its graves that surrounded it. Jack remembered the first time he had been let into this room, Dawn’s Respite, this room that was so dark and cold for one that housed their troubled friends. He had always wondered, looking back during his time on the First, whether the darkness had been his own melancholy warping the memory; but now he was back here, sitting in the same spot, hoping the same hopes, watching the same face for any signs of life. And he realised that it was always this dark. Darkness was something that he was beginning to accept at his side.

But then, there was a flicker next to him.

The crystal next to Urianger’s shoulder began to glow. If he had been able to turn around, he would have seen that all of the Scions’ crystals were glowing. But he couldn’t. Because there was hope here. Right in front of him. And it was mesmerising.

Before his eyes, memories found their way back. Before his eyes, thoughts and feelings settled back where they belonged. Before his eyes, knowledge crept back between bones that had not moved in so very long.

Before his eyes, a soul found its way home.

With a rasping intake of breath that quivered in his throat, lungs that had not been used in many months began to flourish with the bright light of life again. Flowers that were faded and frail with starvation opened up their petals, flushed with colour. Trees that were little but skeletons, their branches bare and cold, shivered as shawls of emerald leaves were drawn over their shoulders.

Then it happened. That which Jack had been waiting for with bated breath.

Urianger’s eyes opened.

And suddenly, the room was filled with light.

He blinked, confused. Then golden irises glimmered with recognition as he realised where he was. 

_Home_.

His gaze turned towards Jack, his senses fine tuned to the hrothgar’s presence. Jack couldn’t stop the tears that dripped down his cheeks. He was back. He was _safe_.

The tears came thicker and faster when Urianger _smiled_. One of those smiles reserved for Jack and Jack only. One of those smiles where Jack could scour the realm and yet never find anything sweeter. One of those smiles that made everything okay, just for a little while.

‘Ladybird… please don’t cry,’ Urianger said, a hand reaching up to take his boyfriend’s hand. His lips still stretched in that smile.

Jack curled his fingers around Urianger’s. He looked at their entwined hands through the blur of his tears. And he almost choked on his next sob as he realised it.

‘You feel…’ he started, but the words stuck in his throat.

The elezen shifted onto his side, his body curling towards his boyfriend instinctively. There was safety there, and in his shaky state, he craved a steady ship in the thrashing ocean that he found himself in. ‘What is it?’ he said, his thumb rubbing through Jack’s soft fur.

‘You feel… _real_ ,’ the hrothgar said, lowering his head to rest his forehead against his boyfriend’s. ‘You feel _right_.’

Urianger’s face crumpled with the force of the melancholy that lay upon him. It had been easy to forget that, on the First, his had been but a fragmented existence; a false summon with no physical body to call his own, though hands that had lay upon his skin had thought otherwise. Even Jack, a master in how Urianger’s body felt, had been fooled. And now the veil had been lifted.

The elezen tilted his head back so that he could press a kiss to Jack’s nose. ‘Full glad am I that everything seemeth to have worked out as we hoped it would,’ he said, softly.

‘I don’t know what I would have done if it hadn’t,’ Jack murmured, his voice for Urianger’s ears only.

‘Well, we need not dwell on such ill tidings,’ the elezen said, his fingers combing through Jack’s fur, soothing the both of them.

It was bliss to feel Jack’s purr rumbling through him. 

\-------------------------

A few days passed before Krile deemed it safe for Urianger to go home with Jack, satisfied that the hrothgar would do everything in his power to keep injury’s cruel hands away from the elezen’s delicate state.

Jack watched as Urianger, his body stiff and sore after months of misuse, wandered around their home. His hands passed over the spines of dusty books that sat upon shelves and others on tables and chairs. His eyes took in everything, all that he had missed so much when he was alone on the First, all that he had tried so very hard to replicate in his room in the Bookman’s Shelves.

A curious thing about love, Jack had found, was that it would always be there, beating through his veins, but sometimes it would flare up. It would spread and quiver like peacock feathers, a glorious display of heart.

And it was then that Jack’s feathers splayed.

Urianger looked so perfect, so beautiful, so ethereal. A lost prince returning to his castle, all of the hurt of his capture left behind him, his only worry now to reconnect with the land that he had been away from for all this time. The land that he belonged in.

And in that moment, the moment that felt so right, Jack uttered the words that he thought would have much more ceremony attached to them. The words that he thought would be accompanied with rich food and fine clothes, a bouquet of flowers and a tearful audience. 

‘Will you marry me, Urianger?’

But instead, those words were uttered amongst unprepared lovers, who stood together in their small home. Those words were whispered with only their books and their furniture watching. Those words were said with brewing tea and soft sleepwear.

‘What didst thou say?’

Those words were uttered to a man who was not ready yet.

‘I’m sorry!’ Jack blurted, his tongue tripping over his stumbling speech. ‘It just— I don’t know— it felt right. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything. Forget I said anything at all. It was too soon, you’ve just gotten back— you’re still adjusting to things, it was too much. I—’

‘Ladybird.’

The words stopped coming. He was so calm, it was a sharp blade next to Jack’s panicked rambling.

Urianger stood in front of him, looking so weak and tired. So _vulnerable_. His hands shook as they took Jack’s.

‘Yes, my love. I’ll marry thee.’

The words were uttered to a panicked lover who wasn’t prepared. The words were said to a man who had thought he had ruined everything. 

‘You’ll do _what_?’

His voice broke, shattered at the feet of the one man who could bring him to his knees. The one man who could break him apart and put him back together in an instant. The one man that he would bring the whole world down for.

‘I shalt marry thee, Ladybird.’

And Jack sobbed.

He sobbed for such a long time, he didn’t think he would ever stop. He drowned and drowned, his lungs filling with water until there was room for no more. He clutched onto Urianger’s shoulders. His lifeline. His precipice in darkest times. 

And Urianger held onto him. Like he had been doing all these years.

Like he always would.

**Author's Note:**

> If you wish to join Emet-Selch's Wholesomely Debauched and Enabling Book Club discord server, you can join here: https://discord.gg/MNh5kT


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